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> Not allowing foreign scientists in, destroying evidence, arresting journalists, etc. That is par for the course. The Chinese government would have acted this

• tgv 5y ago
  Although they were hesitant at first, the Chinese government handled the SARS-1 outbreak differently.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    The similarities vastly outweigh the differences. The biggest difference between SARS-CoV and COVID-19 is that the latter takes a bit longer before you get ill but you are already contagious. Other than that it's mostly the same old story. Note that if not for SARS-CoV this would have been a lot more serious because that served as a dress rehearsal and put a lot of mechanisms in place as well as suggested screening for Coronaviruses in cases like these.
    • baja_blast 5y ago
      Another major difference between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 is that SARS-CoV-1 took time to gain new adaptions to effectively spread between humans. These mutations that SARS-CoV-1 went through allowed researchers to find the intermediate animal host within months. With SARS-CoV-2 there was no known mutation phase where the virus rapidly gained mutations to more efficiently transmit between humans. SARS-COV2 came out the gate perfectly adapted and did not start mutating extensively until many months after it spread globally. These lack of adaptations are also the reason why it's so hard to trace back to the original intermediate host species.
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        > SARS-COV2 came out the gate perfectly adapted We actually do not know this for sure. There is a chance that the reservoir is one step removed and that another host in between amplified the virus to the point where it could make the jump. Ebola also has this property, but it is just a bit too lethal to spread far (fortunately). An Ebola with a slightly longer asymptomatic incubation time (while already shedding) would be far worse then the current versions. With Ebola each and every outbreak starts with an interspecies jump, usually bushmeat. The idea that these jumps are extremely rare is in principle incorrect, but it looks like that because pandemics are rare. But those are just the runaway successes (from the viral point of view).
    • tgv 5y ago
      The comment was about the way the Chinese government (mis)handled the information sharing, etc., and hence about the possibility of a lab leak, not about the actual disease, which (IMO) is even different, as covid-19 is much, much more contagious. And if the lab leak hypothesis is true, then the first outbreak didn't serve "as a dress rehearsal", but rather as the inspiration for the current one.
• eloisius 5y ago
  That's probably true, but constant suspicious behavior shouldn't normalize behaving suspiciously.
  • baq 5y ago
    If you're approaching this with a western democratic frame of mind, yes. This is not suspicious behavior in China, as the GP said - it is standard operating procedure.
    • eloisius 5y ago
      I don't expect it to be suspicious or odd _in China_. What I am saying is that internationally we should not just shrug it off as "aww, it just China, they're always so sneaky and secretive even when it's nothing!" We should treat the situation as if they are indeed hiding something important every time, because otherwise, constantly acting suspiciously about everything is an effective strategy for them conceal anything important. Barring foreign scientists, arresting journalists, and destroying evidence is always suspicious, even if they always do it, and it should always make people from open and free societies curious of why they are doing it, not shrug it off because it's the norm.
      • theskypirate 5y ago
        So should we just pretend to think that it's suspicious even though it doesn't seem suspicious, or do we really need to soak our minds in the void until we actually believe that it is? How many IQ points do I need to lose before I am no longer normalizing totalitarianism?
      • lamontcg 5y ago
        It is being used as proof that they leaked it from a lab, when it is just how societies built like China behave. You can't infer anything from normal behavior. It is similar to the way that Hussein's actions in blocking access to presidential palaces was considered to be highly suspicious and therefore proof that he was hiding his weapons program. Turns out he was just trying to save face domestically by standing up against the weapons inspectors over something that he considered symbolic and immaterial in order to not look like a total pushover (a desperate need of dictators). It had nothing to do with weapons programs at all.
• himinlomax 5y ago
  No kidding: the best (and only?) argument against the lab leak theory is that the communist dictatorship is just acting like a dictatorship.
  • jokethrowaway 5y ago
    No, it's that it happened right next to a centre doing Gain Of Function research on coronaviruses. If you prefer to close your eyes and keep blaming a bat in the nearby Wuhan fish market, you're free to do so.
• ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  > Not allowing foreign scientists in, destroying evidence, arresting journalists, etc. The Chinese government does all these things because it is routinely covering up illegal behavior. The fact that they followed standard operating procedure means they were probably simply continuing with the standard operating procedure of tacitly allowing illegal behavior. Illegal behavior in the context of a lab enhancing viruses is likely to result in a lab leak of a very dangerous virus.